Guild Wars 2

I’m beginning the long, long, long process of crafting Bolt http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bolt
and was hoping for some tips from people who have completed their legendaries or are still in the middle of the process about good farming spots for different materials, costs and anything else that might be helpful for me and others looking to do it.

hey chaotic storm-

i’m working on my bolt as well and taking a very liberal amount of time with it. it depends on how you want to approach the materials cost.

for me, the thought of trying to 100% farm up all the materials is unrealistic. the time frame would be more than a year, even for players that play in excess of 6 hours a day.

a mixed approach would be, imo, more fun and less stressful. what i mean by that is farming some(in reality, less than half, or even a quarter) of the materials and buying the rest from the trading post. let me dispel any feelings of cheapening your legendary by buying the mats. why? if you farmed the gold to buy the mats, it’s still you doing the work to acquire the mats, just in a more efficient manner(and won’t drive you crazy trying to get 100 charged lodestones from sparks).

if you like doing fractals, it seems to be a fair tradeoff for cores and t6 mats in addition to the rares/exotics you can salvage or sell for coin/ecto.

running the more lucrative dungeons such as AC can get you some good coin in a short amount of time as well.

whatever path you take, just remember that if you get bored there’s other avenues(less efficient but maybe more fun?) you can take to still get your bolt.

oh, one more thing: i just made the gift of metal in about 10 days of mining for an hour each day. i spent not a SINGLE copper on it, so it’s totally doable for very cheap or zero coin out of your pocket.

Your biggest problem is gold. I’d advice to try and make money off the TP. It’s not easy, and I can’t tell you what is profitable because it changes every minute of the day. But just keep your eyes on prices of certain materials and see how they change. Then invest in what you think is good.

I wouldn’t worry about the precursor yet, as by the time you have all the other items they’ll have introduced the scavenger hunt (hopefully. Probably in about 1-2 months, but it could be more, we don’t know yet).

Other than that, Dungeons are at the moment one of the most profitable things to do. I’d advise a daily CoF run or two, as it’s the fastest and easiest to pug. Fractals is very profitable too.

Just do the daily every day, by the time you’re not even close to having the amount of gold you need you’ll have enough jugs for the ~1 million karma needed. (Don’t forget to use 50% karma boosters, and 15% guild boost + 5% karma banner when using your karma jugs). The daily will also provide you with the Mystic Coins you need for the Mystic Clovers.

For WvW badges ask if there’s a Mesmer in the Eternal Battlegrounds Jumping Puzzle, because that will provide you with 15 badges per day. Try and check there often. It also helps a lot if you have other characters, because they too can open the chest once a day.

For the Orichalcum mine the Rich orichalcum vein in Southsun Cove every day (it respawns 24 hours after you mined it), again, having alts helps a lot because they too can mine the orichalcum daily.

For the crafting disciplines, look up guides to use the least amount of gold to max them to 400.

Skillpoints you’ll get from doing dungeons.

Before anything, do Mystic Clovers first as they’ll provide you with other t6 materials that you need (and if you’re really lucky even some Lodestones)

Charged lodestones… it’s just a huge grind, I’m sorry. Get these last, as they’re pretty much at their peak in price. Wouldn’t surprise me if anet upped the droprate for these as so many people are complaining about it and anet listens to whiners. (Or you can do daily CoE runs to get charged cores/lodestones)
Also, if you’re gonna buy them, buy Charged Cores instead and convert them to Lodestones, it’ll save A LOT of money (but costs skillpoints, definitely worth it though, like I said, gold is your biggest pitfall in crafting a legendary).

That pretty much covers it all I think. Gold is your biggest problem obviously, and there really aren’t many shortcuts unless you play the TP and make a killing somehow, but it’s very hard as there’s a lot of competition.

edit: Forgot to add, buy Icy Runestones at the very very last. Cause these will never change price. Other materials will.

edit2: Also, use the 1 time clover recipe. You can afford to not get a clover at a 1 ecto/1 obs shard loss, but you can’t afford getting nothing at a 10 ecto/10 obs shard loss. Yes, the return rate is the same 1 in 3. But it will only be 1 in 3 if you use large numbers. 8 tries (to get 77 clovers) isn’t enough to balance this RNG. You could do 15 tries and get only 10 clovers. Not worth it at all. Be safe, do the 1 time recipe.

rogue has some very good points. you will have a ton of excess skill points if you are taking this casually and the more you farm the mats, the more skill points you’ll have. you can then, like he said, turn cores into lodestones.

clovers should definitely be done first. in fact, i would even venture to say that the biggest 2 hurdles are the rng aspect of clovers and the gold for charged lodestones. i suggest the gift of fortune FIRST, then do the gift of bolt SECOND. the other gifts don’t really require any gold and can be made concurrently while farming the gold/mats for the gifts of fortune and bolt.

I have two legendaries, Bifrost and Sunrise, both acquired through crafting (not buying through TP)

Probably repeated above, but here are my general tips:
-Always do clovers before buying all your T6 components. The clover failures will most likely give you what you need to supply certain gifts.
-never farm lodestones. The drop rate is atrocious and mobs are so spaced out that your average drop rate per hour is horrendous. If you want the most gold per hour, I suggest grinding shelt/pen. Sucks? Yeah, but if you want your legendary, you need to suck it up. Buy your lodestones – but always keep an eye on the market, as it is often more cheaper to buy cores.
-leave precursor last if you can. I don’t see price dropping any further and there may be a chance the scavenger quest comes out before you finish it. If you wish to try the forge, go for precursors that sell the highest (like greatsword or dagger). Sell the precursor and buy the one for Bolt, leaving you with extra money.
-badge farming. As much as possible, participate in WvW Friday-Sunday. That’s when there are many people and zerg trains that you can follow. If you don’t like that, make sure you do jumping puzzles on your BL, and if possible, the one in EB. Do this for all alts.

I just wanted to throw in make sure you are doing your exploration at the same time as you are looking for Clovers. The exploration is fairly time consuming as well.

Question for Vol? What do you mean by farm Shelt/Pent? I have seen you put in it various post so far just looking for some clarification.

Shelt/Pen is the area from Shelter’s Gate to Penitent Path in Cursed Shore.

Eat ice cream too, when you drink your karma jugs.